Pirate Bay Bootleg Site Moves to North Korea

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Like actual privateers, the scalawags at The Pirate Bay — a
search engine for
illicit downloads of copyrighted material — have traveled
from port to port, seeking safe haven from a legal storm. These
pernicious purveyors of ill-gotten digital goods moved their
operations from Sweden to Norway earlier this year, but quickly
fell out of favor with their Norwegian benefactors. The site is
still up and running, though, thanks to an Internet service
provider based in North Korea.

The Hermit Kingdom, despite not being the biggest fan of
democracy or the freedom of information, nevertheless took up The
Pirate Bay’s Jolly Roger, according to a trace of the site’s
digital pathways. During its transition from the snowy shores of
Norway to the less-friendly environs of North Korea, The Pirate
Bay’s servers were down for a grand total of 10 minutes. The site
itself does not host any illegal files, but rather provides
“torrents,” which allow multiple users to share files — legal or
illegal — with one another.

The reason why
North Korea would want to provide safe haven for digital
pirates is a mystery, but Rick Falkvinge has a theory. Falkvinge
leads the Swedish Pirate Party, a coalition of Swedes who believe
that the freedom of information justifies any and all forms of
file-sharing, including piracy of copyrighted materials. “North
Korea may have the one government on this planet which takes
pride in asking Hollywood and United States interests to take a
hike in the most public way imaginable,” he writes.

The irony is not lost on the captains of The Pirate Bay. “Our
opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of
America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is (sic)
said to be held high,” states a press release on their behalf.
“And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the
world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding
access to information.”

This is not the first time The Pirate Bay has been involved in a
deeply paradoxical situation. Last month, the Finnish Copyright
Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) copied The Pirate
Bay’s website design verbatim, changing only the mission
statement so that it mocked piracy instead of embracing it.

The Pirate Bay responded, “Stealing material like this on the
Internet is a threat to economies worldwide. We feel that we must
make a statement and therefore we will sue them for
copyright infringement.” No suit followed, however.

The North Korea solution is unorthodox, but not nearly as much as
The Pirate Bay’s other proposal: server storage in the sky. By
launching unmanned server drones into the troposphere, the site’s
administrators believe that shutting down the controversial
torrent repository will require an actual airstrike.

While the North Korean server hosting seems to be real, it’s
probably best to take the drone server suggestion with a grain of
salt. After all, this is the same organization that printed up
$0 gift cards for display in Swedish
supermarkets.